Getting started on LinkedIn – Part Three – Your LinkedIn contact details

Getting started on LinkedIn: Part Three – Your LinkedIn Contact Details

Why are your LinkedIn contact details important?

Given that people have an attention span shorter than a goldfish nowadays you need to make it easy for people to get in touch with you.

LinkedIn can add links to your website, multiple Twitter accounts, multiple email addresses, instant messaging such as Skype and WeChat. You can also customise the URL (or public name) that LinkedIn gives you to make it easier to find you on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has several contact fields which, by default are not filled in. These include your phone number, address and website, very important information!

Who can see your contact details?

Only your connections can see your contact details in the contact details area.

If you would like to be more open than this then add the additional “Advice for Contacting” section and move it to the bottom of your profile and add an email/phone number to it or add them to your Summary.

Please do not put your phone number in your headline or name. This is breaking the LinkedIn User Agreement.

Where to put your contact details

LinkedIn has a separate section for adding your contact details. This is located just underneath your photograph.

What to put on LinkedIn

Your phone number (essential) and address (optional) plus links to external sites such as your website.

It is essential to put a phone number on LinkedIn. An address is optional depending upon where you work. If you work from home I would be cautious about adding it (I don’t have it on mine).

Also consider adding links to your website, blog, Twitter, and other online accounts. You have space for up to 3 links plus multiple Twitter accounts.

When adding a link to your website or other external account chose the Other option and add the name of the link to the middle box and put the link in the third box.

WeChat is another available option. This is a free messaging tool which works in tandem with your mobile phone.

Updating your public URL

This is the name you are known by on LinkedIn and by default it has lots of numbers after your name.

I highly recommend editing this to remove the numbers and to grab your full name if possible. If you have a common name you may need to add a middle initial or a suffix which is something to do with your business, for example, one of my clients is a coach and she is known as carolinehartlifecoach.

How much space do you have?

You can find out more about the space available in each field in LinkedIn in my previous LinkedIn post here.

Your #LinkedIn contact details: Update your public profile URL so you can be found easily

#LinkedInTip

Quick Tip No 1: Add a second email address to your profile so you have a personal one as well as a work one and you can accept connection requests from either and you won’t lose access to it if you change jobs.

Quick Tip No 2: Add your public profile URL to your email signature and business card so people can find you easily.

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